Northside Produce Markets

Having missed the Growers Markets earlier in the month, I decided to make the trek over to the darkside & see what the Northside Produce Markets had to offer. According to Casey, as recently as last August, the mushroom man was still turning up, but alas it was not to be. This was, of course, my main attraction.

Upon arrival, we got told from a regular fruit & veg person that the mushroom guy hasn't been sighted for ages, and that they would usually stock more variety than the last packet of swiss browns we snapped up. Wandering around, I couldn't help noticing that a lot of the stalls were identical to the ones I usually visit at the Pyrmont Growers' ones, like Roche Brothers (the peach man!), Willowbrae Chevre, the Tobey's and Forsyth Coffee stalls, the Cootamundra Kid, and Lee from Kurrajong. So I whenever I saw something a bit different, I jumped at the opportunity to sample it.

Whitworths, well, I'm not sure what was going on here. I try and avoid all semblances of coffee on weekends, to prove to myself that I can do it dry, and that no, I'm not really addicted. But since I hadn't seen these guys before, I thought, well why not. There was a bit of miscommunication between the people working the stall. The girl taking the money seemed all too happy to assure us that the beans they were using in the machine were the Columbian blend. The girl doing the milk side wasn't sure what kind of beans they were using, and had to ask the barrista. The barrista replied that they were actually using the Costa Rican blend. Which I had just purchased 250g of. If I had been told that at the beginning, I would have purchased the Columbian blend instead! This already put us in a bad mood in which to sample the coffee. This is what it looked like:

Car Dependance

Well. I have just gone and bought a car, after several years of dithering & thinking about it; then replying that no, I could get around on public transport and on my pushie just fine, and in fact, I live in the inner city, and I don't NEED a car, I went and bought one.

And what a shiny new toy it is. I feel guilty just filling up - and I've done it only once. Looking at those last few drops of liquid from the bowser, I made sure I got every single drop that I had paid for. Can you believe it, something like one tonne of fossilised and compressed plant material and dead dinosaurs went into making the one litre of petrol we are so cavaliar about combusting into nothing?

Already, I have used half a tank of petrol. In 3 days. Since I went and picked the car up, I've used it every single day without fail. And I'm going to use it for the next three days as well. Instead of thinking 'oh, i'll have a quiet night in', I went and drove across town to see a french film in leichhardt, and, because leichhardt is under the delusion that "kitchen open till late" means 10pm !?!?!?!?!, went to a friend's house and had take out pizza instead. Stayed until just after midnight, but the point is, if I hadn't had the car, I wouldn't have been lazy and driven over to leichhardt, I probably would have stayed at home and gone to bed. And even if I had gone, I would not have stayed so late. And what does that say? That the public transport system in this city is ROOTED, and it sucks that I can only get across town by going into the city and then out again. The public transport system resembles a spider: there is no way of getting from leg 1 to leg 5 without going through the main body. GRRR.

Anyway, back to laziness, and car dependance. Then, instead of riding across town again to meet my friends and go on a virtuous bike ride, I drove. Across town. With the bike in the back. In order to go on a "let's be healthy" bike ride.

I hang my head in shame.

Sailor's Thai

I've always wanted to try this place, ever since I purchased the
Thai Food book by David Thompson, the founder of the restaurant. Plus, it was rated one hat by the smh good food guide. The book is so gorgeous, bound in hot pink silk with two ribbon bookmarks (useful!), but I found it so dense with information and complicated recipes, that the only thing I have managed to make from it was Tom Yum Soup. Another problem I found with it is that the spelling of the dishes is different to the spelling that you see in the Thai places around Sydney, so even Tom Yum is not filed as such, but under 'dtom yam gung'.

The menu was short - one side for mains, another for the drinks list. Some of the items on the menu included:
· Pad Thai - stir-fried rice noodles with peanuts, dried prawns, and bean sprouts
· Som Dtam - green papaya salad with cabbage, coconut rice and bbq caramelised pork
· Raw Salmon marinated with chillies and lime juice
· Jewfish with large chillies & ..?
· Yellow chicken curry with mustard greens

My only complaint about the wine list is all the wines available were very young, with the oldest being 3 years old. But perhaps older, more complex wines aren't suited to the thai style of food.

Usually a risotto is my 'test dish' of any restaurant that I visit; hard to do well, but fantastic when it is. It looks like the green papaya salad has turned my Thai restaurant equivalent. So I ordered it. It came out very quickly, so I guess they had all the ingredients to hand & just had to plate it. The salad was very smooth, with crunchy roast peanuts, dried shrimp, a cherry tomato & raw beans. The coconut rice was topped with fried shallots, and had that nice glossy finish & a delicate flavour. The BBQ pork, however, was the star of the dish. Intense nuggetty little squares of pork, that must have been air or oven dried before roasting it again with a yummy sweet sauce - similar to the Chinese Char-Siew, but more like the flavour of beef jerky that you can buy from stalls in Chinatown. The whole dish was a meal in itself, and you had enough varied tastes so that you enjoy every bite. However, I found the salad a bit lacking. It seemed to missing one element, one edge - like just a little more crushed shrimp, or a tad more chilli, or a pinch more garlic in the sauce.

The second dish ordered was a yellow chicken curry with egg noodles. The garnish was different, deep fried egg noodles, and at first I thought that were all the noodles I was going to get. Thankfully there were also some served in the curry sauce, although it seems a strange concept. Curry is for rice, right? Good yellow colour, but I'm unsure what a yellow curry is supposed to taste like. Even squeezing in the lime segment, and adding a little of the black chilli sauce to the curry didn't seem to make a difference. I could taste top note of chilli, and a base note of a light coconut milk, but there was no depth, nothing in between. Unlike the salad, I think that with this one, the dish didn't seem complex enough to hold it's own. "Wagamama-Syndrome", I've nicknamed it, where the dish tastes boring and 'samey' all the way through.

Rice was served in a flat open bowl, and got cold very quickly.

Service was very quick, atmosphere was fun & communal. I kept wanting to reach over & try a little of the prawn spring rolls that my neighbours had ordered. Serving sizes were deceptively large. Total damage was $56 for two, with two dishes, serving of rice, and two drinks. Would I go again? Yeah, probably, but with a larger group.

The Motorcycle Diaries

The original plan had been to head to the moonlight cinema at centennial park, and with the atmosphere of screaming bats, vengeful ibises and suicidal mozzies watch "The motorcycle diaries". We thought it would be entirely appropriate, watching a movie about the life of Che Guevara before he became 'Che' under the stars.

Firstly, it sold out. Okay, so instead we went to the Opera Bar for a pre-movie drink (How far the mighty have fallen), where M was in raptures of the G&T.

The movie was great. It started out quite slowly, with Fuser & his sidekick Angelo (who was sidekick, who was leader)? conceiving a mad plan to ride across South America, and 'get lots of chicks', before Angelo turns 30, and before Fuser starts medical school. Starting out on 'The mighty one', visiting Fuser's girlfriend, finally losing The-Mighty-One after one too many encounters with cows. You could see Angelo as the kind of friend that you both hate to love, and love to hate, as he gets you embroiled in one scrape after another. The film got a bit disjointed near the end, where Fuser turns from just the quiet thinker, the background man, into something to really step back and watch; moving from observer/empathiser of south american hardships to a sudden rousing speechmaker. That was a bit jarring, as though the director suddenly thought that they had to finish the movie, and now.

But it was really really good.

Tank Stream Bar

I went here after work on Friday to check it out. It had a very after-work feel, and I must have been adding to the atmosphere. The entrance to the establishment hotel is also through here. I guess that if you are a guest here, you would be carrying minimal luggage. G&T with bombay gin cost me an enormous $7.20. $7.20! For a drink from a place with no view, and a rapidly diminishing crowd? Sheesh. Plus it tasted wrong, and not smooth at all. ..can't be the gin, so what - she used soda water instead of tonic on the tap? Or perhaps the tonic water flavoured syrup had run out? Or perhaps the lines were dirty. Hmm. Wouldn't get that drink again, and not from that place again.

Getting cultured x 2

Having subscribed to both the belvoir & the sydney theatre company last year, I decided that I would do the same again this year, but I would have to make a choice: I could only chose one. How awful! But I had felt very spread thin last year, running around with plays and various sporting activities, and I've just become a subscriber/supporter of 2mbsfm, and promptly stopped listening to it, so I had to restrict myself to just one theatre subscription.

And (OMG), I can't believe I did this. I re-subscribed to the STC, the one that all the bloody north shore john howard supporter types go to. *hangs head in shame*. Well....out of all the plays I saw last year, I enjoyed all but 2 from STC; and with the belvior I only _liked_ 2, and only didn't mind 1 of em. So that's 2/7 of belvoir that I liked, and 6/8 of the STC.

What on earth is going on? I'm a left-leaning greenie who supports independants, and I'm _supposed_ to like what the independants such as belvoir (although they do have nicole kidman & geoffry rush as supporters) present, but I didn't. *sob* I'm turning into a chardonnay swilling silvertail lah-de-dah.

Fish...?

How am I supposed to tell if my fish are alive? They are installed in a old cast iron bathtub (no feet, unfortunately), with lots of water lillies & irises as cover, and I can't see the blighters!! Because of this drought, they've been a bit neglected, and I haven't been able to fill up their pond as often as I would like. But I would say that the extensive water lily coverage would have helped slow the evaporation process down. Anyway - I would have thought that if my fishies had died, there would have been little bodies floating on the surface, but I haven't been able to see them. I had a bit of a rummage around, but wasn't able to detect their presence. I'm not in the mood to decant all the water & clean the pond, and hopefully find alive fish in the process - so how am I supposed to tell if they're still there, and not floating in the great toilet bowl in the sky?

Paprika

Opened a new packet of paprika today. As cool as Herbie's is, he's too expensive to purchase bulk items such as black peppercorns, mustard seeds & paprika from. So I got it from fiji market, down in Newtown. I know it is derived from chillies, pimetos, or something similar, but I didn't expect it to smell like dry tomato!

Big brother is already here.

My work has recently installed on all of our computers, a coffee-break type software which monitors every single keystroke, every single application you use, and how long you spend on the computer. Supposedly for OH&S purposes, it is surprising how much it really picks up. Like 'oh, did i really spend 2 hrs today checking emails?'. Hmm. I mean what it is supposed to do is go - uh oh, you've been working really intensely for 10 minutes, time to take a break! And then it suggests exercises for you to do whilst it has taken over your computer, and forces you to do something else. It is quite scary. And quite embarrassing how much you come to *ahem* rely on it.

I was looking at the application monitoring bit for the past week or so, just to make sure I wasn't spending _too_ much time on email. Before it got installed, I even went so far as to write the most enormous sign to stick on my monitor so I didn't keep compulsively clicking on outlook to check my mail (& finding, disappointingly, that nobody loves me). And now? After so many complaints about email monitoring, computer usage monitoring, and how none of this crap was part of our contracts, they've disabled it. So I have no idea how much time I have spent frittering away on the 'net, on the email. And now I'm back to compulsively clicking on outlook, every 2 minutes, even if I've just closed the application. I guess I have an addictive type personality.

Youch

I can't believe how much of a wuss I am. It took 5 years of talking to myself (and believe me, people think I'm weird enough already) to go & get my ears pierced. It felt like someone had flicked me with a rubber band. That is all.

Car hunting

I can't believe that hunting for a car could be so time-consuming and expensive. Sick of begging lifts off people, asking if I could borrow "you & your car", unable to get the surfboard that I so dearly wanted to purchase, I decided that I should get one of my own.

At first the budget was under 10k, but I couldn't find anything I liked.

Then I upped it to 15k, which, would just borderline, get me something decent. For some reason, people kept insisting that I get an echo, because it's such a good deal. But it's UGLY! How could I drive an ugly car? Plus I've been in them (which the friends recommending them hadn't), and they were very very small on the side. You have to be very good, very 'close' friends to be able to seat 3 in the back of the 'sedan' version. Even riding shotgun - and I'm a skinny linny here, I could feel that any larger personage would have an uncomfortable squashed ride. The only positive thing that I could think about the echo is the digital speedo.

So now I'm looking at new cars. I've done ecos, why the hell am I looking at new cars? I _know_ I'm going to instantly lose 20% of the value. But they're so shiny. I can't believe I'm thinking of dropping over 20k on a bloody car.

And don't even talk to me about insurance. Okay, so I'm an unknown risk. But a $4k premium for a 6 year old GOLF worth $15k does not make any !sense!. ARGH, I can't believe it. Okay, so I'm a young'un, but a premium that's 1/4 the cost of the car does not make sense.

Grr. So if anyone knows of a good surfboard deal that comes with a free car, please let me know.

Markets, aaaaiii

Went to the smh/pyrmont growers' markets today. I haven't been for almost a year, just because I felt 'so over' it. The same producers, the same products, the same people each month. So I stopped going & really enjoyed that whole sleep in business you can do on weekends. This time I took some friends who had just returned from France, and who were missing the whole concept of fresh cheese that you could buy anywhere & everywhere there. Being unable to convince them to make their own (& thus be able to reap the fruits of my bossiness, as it were), I instead kicked them out of bed early to head to the markets.

And then I remembered why I had enjoyed getting up so early once a month when I was young and stupid. Just the whole atmosphere, of people who enjoy food wandering around and talking to all the producers, who get up even earlier to tend to their geese or smoke their trout or turn their cheese. And this time I didn't encounter those incredibly rude pushy people who pushed in front of me when it was clearly my turn. Maybe somebody else had pushed them into the harbour as retaliation.

Unfortunately, the mushroom people weren't there, and I was a tad disappointed. I managed to resist the native jam man - hello, I _still_ have jars of stuff from 3 years ago that I haven't touched. but it should be okay, right? it's not as though I've broken the seal, and it's all sugar anyway so there is nothing to spoil. also resisted the lure of the willowbrae chevre, but got suckered in by the supreme tastiness of the SJ club blue (*aaaaaahhhhhhhh***), and a new cheddar......can't quite remember what it was. The jannai camerbert was diVine darls, so I suckered 3 others into buying it instead. I'll give it a shot next time, after all I already have a fridge full-o-cheese. And *squeal* you gotta get some peaches off the peach bloke if he's there next time, superb!

Surfers!

At coogee! Unbelievable. I saw surfers hanging off the southern end of coogee waiting for a wave. In fact today, when I went down to visit late after work, there were guys who were just waiting for the flags to be pulled down before they went out for some nice ones off the northern end as well. Wow. Makes me wish I had a board so I could have gone & gotten hammered as well. And compared to the waves at Bondi, these ones were way better! Apparently the incredible swell was due to an 'intense low pressure system off NZ' in addition to another LP system off queensland, so come on El Nino, give us another one, so I can have a go too!

Time to Watch. And Laugh. And Mock

Yeah, woo. Buffy is BACK. At the worst time possible of course, 2300 on Sunday nights, when good little princesses should be tucked up in bed. Tonight's episode was 'Syd the dummy', one from season 1 when storylines were good & tasty. And x-files on on afterwards! argh! early first season! they look so young! Dunno why people pick on poor keanu for having no facial expression, young fox mulder is just as bad! mmmm, eyecandy. Speaking of things tasty - how irresistible are jb hi-fi's prices - $21 for a 3dvd box set of the buffster. I am so in lurve, and doing all I can to resist the lure of the instant purchase. The only thing holding me back is the possibility of getting frequent flyer points on the purchase, if I so had a credit card linked to a frequent flyer scheme. Hmm.

Mmm, tasty

How good a diet does my compost bin get? Today's contributions included illy coffee grounds, helga's bread, celery, carrot & chai tea leaves. Plus a bucket full of general garden twigs & leaves to add to the carbon content. Apart from the last bit, the compost bin is eating really well, & it is all reducingas planned - I am soooo pleased! I'd better get some swanky compost out of it, the quality of stuff that I'm feeding it.

Latham: He was damn well pushed

Not that I'm a fan of the labor party or anything. Not that there is much difference between the labor & the liberal parties at all. But Latham was damn well pushed.

What is the point, labor party, of all this political infighting, of stabbing each other in the backs, of attacking each other through the media? What is the flipping point? Do you really think that all these sudden leadership changes, and all of the above will _really_ win you any votes? The whole GODDAMN point of having a leader is that you chose her/him, and you support them 100%. If they decide to quit, fine, if they get sick whilst on annual leave, fine. If they make some bad decisions, okay, that was a bad decision, but live with it, and you continue to support your *leader* in public. This a presents a nice cohesive, stable and UNITED front to us, your dear potential voters, and gosh-darn, we might even vote for you in the next election. But fuckin attacking Latham while he's on leave, through the media, mind you, and forcing him to resign, by saying "oooh, he's a bit sick", and "oooh, he's made a couple of bad decisions" and "oooh, do you really want to stay on as leader?" is *not* playing nice at all.

Think about it. If you were on holidays from work. And you happened to be sick, whilst on holidays. And sure, you had been sick once whilst working, but you took sick leave, and that's fine. Your company, not even bothering to call you first says , "oh, so and so is sick. i don't think they can do their job anymore", and starts recruiting for someone to fill your boots. Don't you think that you were just pushed?

Petty Petty Petty

So I get moved, against my will, to a new section. As I have done so in the past, with no comment, I take my ergonomic furniture with me. This furniture was purchased on my behalf because my deskspace had been assessed to need it so that I could work efficiently. Halfway through the day I get an INCREDIBLY RUDE email from the petty dept saying that this furniture had been purchased using *their* budget, costing XYZ amount of dollars, and could I please return it immediately.

HELLO! WTF?!?!?

Okay fine. It had been purchased under their budget. So please drop me a nice email asking for it back. Don't tell me how much it cost (which I quite frankly disbelieve, if the item cost that much, it would behind glass), and don't couch it in such rude language. As usual, the petty department serves only itself, and is incredibly territorial over its own very small domain. I had though better of them before, but this incident just reinforces my own impression of them as administrivia.

Huh

This year has gone by super fast. What have I done? What have I have achieved this year? Um. I still climb at the same level that I climbed at before; in fact possibly have gotten worse. My technique has gone a bit to pieces. No longer am I watching what I spend, in fact, I'm quite scared of adding up how much I've spent so far this year - or rather, the past year point five. I've taken up surfing - so that's a new obsession to add to my current tally of expensive hobbies. I tried to give up coffee - twice, and then fell straight off the wagon a couple of days later. And I've just had a dental check up and don't need _any_ fillings. Hurrah!

Becasse: the degustation

After some indecision in choosing between the al-a-carte menu and the degustation menu, we decided upon the degustation. After all, you only live once, and how often does one head into a restaurant like this? Tempting on the a-la carte menu were the fried courgette flowers, the venison and the risotto. I always like choosing a risotto to get the measure of a place, but well, I can get risotto any old time right?

This was the menu:

1. Amuse Bouche - root vegetable soup with foie gras chantilly
2. Cured Saltwater Char with a Salad of Abalone
3. Ballontine (terrine) of squab with salad & game bird consommé
4. Grilled mahi mahi with garlic chive potato, seared prawns and red wine jus
5. Oxtail with calves tongue and a (stack) of potato, sweetcorn
6. cheese platter - triple cream brie, washed rind, blue, sheep's milk camembert, (Pyrenees ewes milk cheese)
7. Pre Dessert - vanilla bean champagne granita with nectarine jelly
8. Baked Brioche with Orange Flower Anglaise and Praline Ice Cream

We also asked for the degustation to be matched with wine, and so for each course, you get a half glass (tasting size), resulting in 2.5 glasses over your meal.

We started with a small shot of a creamy root vegetable soup, with a final note of turnip. Amuse Bouche. An odd choice, I would have thought that root vegetables were past their prime, considering we are well on the way into Summer. But given that the weather has all been stuffed up recently, and how my jonquils bloomed in midwinter (no! no! go back into the ground! you're not supposed to come out till September!), I shouldn't be surprised.

Number two was also the first entree offering on the a-la-carte menu. Salt crusted rectangle of Char resting upon a bed of small delicate greens & thin slices of abalone. The char was crispy, but over salty. I couldn't believe it when I read in this week's good living that chef Justin North hopes that the next supply of char is saltier. Very light, pleasing dish, I really liked the salad. What are those small greens, looks a bit like baby bamboo/asparagus with segments, but very thin and delicate? Anyway, I'm a fan. Abalone was thinly sliced. A lot different to the big meaty chunks of abalone in a Chinese restaurant, it was hard to pick up on the delicate flavour, with the pieces melting almost as soon as you put it on your tongue.

A round stamp of terrine, a baby curly endive & green bean salad, a square shot glass with a medium brown coloured consume, drizzled round with (I think) the same consommé reduction. Wow. Hitting the hard stuff here. The texture on the outside of the ballontine was very similar to that of squab skin. Ballontine was meaty in rich in taste. The consommé itself was very very rich. It had an overtone of sweetness, almost like a light caramel or palm sugar. Although it matched the ballontine, it got to be too overpowering. I felt like I was drinking meat sauces straight from the pan, and could not finish it. The salad (I must have a thing for green things) had a great dressing. Instead of your usual balsamic vinegar/olive oil match; it seemed to be only slightly sharp, and the oil used seemed to be derived from some meat. The oil off the game consume? I\'m uncertain. A very rich dish.

The mahi mahi was beautifully presented, with a finishing circle of the red wine jus which was delicious. Still with a salty crust, but not as salty as the char earlier. On a bed of green garlic chive mash that tasted more like 'green' or had a bit of a grassy texture; The two prawns were oversalty again; I'm not sure if the intended effect was a salt crust or not...

Woo! Animal bits! My favourite dish of the evening, Oxtail with calves tongue, a (stack) of potato, and sweet corn. Oxtail, which I also thought was a winter-warming dish was a little cylinder with some ham (?) in the middle in place of the tailbone. It was brown. It was rich. It had fat. It was good. The calves tongue - even better. It was browner. Almost caramelised to crispness on the outside, it was crunchy, with pockets of rich almost liver like (putty! putty!) flavour. Ooohhh, it was gooood. Well worth it if you're a carnivore & don't mind bits.

Quite full, but eager to try some French Cheeses, so I made room in my cheese stomach. I'm not sure if I tried these in the right order...and unfortunately I remember only what the cheeses were made from, and not anything else about them. I know that you're supposed to try from the lighter cheese to the more strongly flavoured ones - and to me, washed rind tends to be more stinky than the blues. Served with a whole-wheat ryvita-like cracker, a lighter pepper cracker & a warm walnut & date bread; also apple slices & grapes to clear the palate. Anyway, this is what we had:

A round stamp of terrine, a baby curly endive & green bean salad, a square shot glass with a medium brown coloured consume, drizzled round with (I think) the same consommé reduction. Wow. Hitting the hard stuff here. The texture on the outside of the ballontine was very similar to that of squab skin. Ballontine was meaty in rich in taste. The consommé itself was very very rich. It had an overtone of sweetness, almost like a light caramel or palm sugar. Although it matched the ballontine, it got to be too overpowering. I felt like I was drinking meat sauces straight from the pan, and could not finish it. The salad (I must have a thing for green things) had a great dressing. Instead of your usual balsamic vinegar/olive oil match; it seemed to be only slightly sharp, and the oil used seemed to be derived from some meat. The oil off the game consume? I'm uncertain. A very rich dish.

The mahi mahi was beautifully presented, with a finishing circle of the red wine jus which was delicious. Still with a salty crust, but not as salty as the char earlier. On a bed of green garlic chive mash that tasted more like 'green' or had a bit of a grassy texture; The two prawns were oversalty again; I'm not sure if the intended effect was a salt crust or not...

Woo! Animal bits! My favourite dish of the evening, Oxtail with calves tongue, a (stack) of potato, and sweet corn. Oxtail, which I also thought was a winter-warming dish was a little cylinder with some ham (?) in the middle in place of the tailbone. It was brown. It was rich. It had fat. It was good. The calves tongue - even better. It was browner. Almost caramelised to crispness on the outside, it was crunchy, with pockets of rich almost liver like (putty! putty!) flavour. Ooohhh, it was gooood. Well worth it if you're a carnivore & don't mind bits.

Quite full, but eager to try some French Cheeses, so I made room in my cheese stomach. I'm not sure if I tried these in the right order...and unfortunately I remember only what the cheeses were made from, and not anything else about them. I know that you're supposed to try from the lighter cheese to the more strongly flavoured ones - and to me, washed rind tends to be more stinky than the blues. Served with a whole-wheat ryvita-like cracker, a lighter pepper cracker & a warm walnut & date bread; also apple slices & grapes to clear the palate. Anyway, this is what we had:
a) triple cream brie (or camembert? I get them confused) - light & oozy but has that white mould/farmyard sort of 'breath' if it makes sense;
b) a washed rind - had a texture like edam, really not as stinky as expected;
c) a blue -yummy, my fave, went really well with the walnut & date bread;
d) a sheep's milk camembert (wooo, stinky!!);
e) an ewes milk hard cheese - has that nutty bit like the heidi tilsit, but not as much.

And the grapes/apple slices did NOTHING to cleanse the palate. the cheese just made em taste horrible. What's the difference between sheep milk & ewe milk? is an ewe a goat?

Pre-dessert of vanilla bean champagne granita with nectarine jelly came in a little shot glass. I wonder - is it a popular thing in Banc-trained chefs, or just in classically trained chefs? At both Banc and Balzac (hey ... at Becasse too, is there a thing with the 'B's here?), the pre-dessert was a little shot of something involving jelly. This one was gorgeous, a shot of light pink jelly with two nectarine slices, topped with a white granita with the telltale vanilla specks throughout. Mmmmm. I have had a champagne granita once, with natural oysters, and that was alcoholic and horrible. This was a divine, melt in the mouth, matches with all the notes type dish, and I wish I could have had more.

The real dessert-dessert was Baked Brioche with Orange Flower Anglaise and Praline Ice Cream. Praline Ice-cream, tasty, and not overpoweringly sweet; Baked brioche; also came with the little sugared citrus or orange peel & a syrup on top. the anglaise I presume was that fluffy whipped cappuccino stuff to one side. Good for the sweet tooth. I, alas had no space left in my dessert tummy, having converted it to a cheese tummy, and I could not finish it. I had saved a little of the pre-dessert though, and it was great as a meal finisher.

These were the matching wines:
2. 2002 Domaine Pierre de la Grange Muscadet (Loire Valley). On its own it had a Verdelho's peach nose & the body was similar to both Verdelho & a Semillon. It matched all elements of the Saltwater Char dish beautifully.
3. 2001 Scarborough Chardonnay (Hunter Valley). A bit of a so-so wine, typical chardonnay nose, but not much on the palate. Seemed to just match the Ballontine, but not the salad or the consommé.
4. 2003 Bries Pinot (Yarra Valley). This was pretty cold & dead when it reached the table. Some swirling of the glass produced a slight berry/strawberry nose, but that was all I got. Oxidised? Dead fruit wine? Unsure. It did not go with the dish at all.
5. 2001 Reydon Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (Langhorne, SA). Big nose. Big body. Very dark purple colour. Cut through the oily richness of the oxtail very well.
6. 2002 Peter Howland Shiraz (Donnybrook WA). I haven't yet work out how to match a wine to a cheese, and possibly since I destroyed my palate by eating the cheeses in the wrong order, it didn't seem to match any of them. Sorry.
8. Domaine de Bernardins Muscat Beaumes de Venise (Rhone Valley). Supposedly with raisin & floral notes that the sommelier thought would match the orange anglaise of the dessert; I picked up on more of an apple jelly kind of nose, possibly something herbal. Tasted like a sticky.

So as you can tell, I really enjoyed my dinner at Becasse. I don't know how other people have managed to have the degustation menu and _still_ feel the need for pizza afterwards to fill the gaps. Go & do the ramen challenge if you don't appreciate it! Service was 2/3rds good, I'm afraid one person just grated on my nerves. The degustation menu, matched with wine, if you're a drinker is well worth it and highly recommended. I saw two other tables doing the degustation thing, and declaring that it was the best meal they had ever had. If you can save up the cash, do eeet!

Bus Rant

Annoyance #1: people who sit on the 'aisle' seat of the bus, and refuse to move even if you're loaded down with shopping.
Annoyance #2: the idiotic person, who insists on standing in the aisle of the bus, in some random spot, just so that they can continue talking to their friend. Firstly, it f00ks up the whole flow of people who get on the bus, because they won't bloody move, and because everybody has to push past them. Secondly, they talk in a stupid cockney accent, in 6 syllable bites so I can't bloody eavesdrop. Guy on the bus, you know who you are.